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Reine-Marie brought out the book with its yellow cover and happy little monkey. It was unopened and unread.
“Now why would your mother buy this but not read it to you?”
Reine-Marie turned it upside down and shook. She’d found quite a few things hidden between the pages of books donated to the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec. Documents. Letters. Even money.
Both women watched, but nothing fell out.
Putting the book down again, Reine-Marie said, “It looks to me like your mother hid all this from you. Can you think why?”
“Sorry. This’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Do you mind if I have a little look around?”
While surprised, Susan said, “Knock yourself out. I need to keep packing.”
Twenty-five minutes later, after going through the rest of the house, Reine-Marie stood next to Enid Horton’s bed. Her deathbed, as it turned out.
Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, she got onto it, rolled on her side, and lifted her arm.
Her hand, finger out like a pencil, touched a rough patch in the rosebud wallpaper. It wasn’t a flaw. It was a scratch.
“What’re you doing?” came a man’s angry voice from the door.
Chapter 26
Judging by the dark circles under their eyes, and the lethargy, neither Abigail Robinson nor Colette Roberge had slept the night before. Both looked stunned, shell-shocked.
But that didn’t mean one of them wasn’t the killer. It seemed to Gamache that whoever murdered Debbie Schneider hadn’t started the day, or even the evening, planning to kill.
It was probably as much a shock to him, or her, as to everyone else.
The three of them sat, once again, around the fireplace in the kitchen. All very much aware of the empty chair.
“Any progress, Armand?” Colette asked.
“We’re gathering evidence, information. And I need more information from you, Professor Robinson.”
“Yes. Anything.”
“Why did you really come here?” It felt like the hundredth time he’d asked that.
Abigail Robinson had been expecting some question about Debbie Schneider, and was momentarily stumped.
“I told you already. It was to see Ruth Zardo.”
“And yet you didn’t speak to her at all last night.”
He placed the button on the table between them, then sat back and watched as color returned to Professor Robinson’s face.
“Yes, exactly. I came to thank her for letting us use that line from her poem.”
“ ‘Alas,’ ” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the name of the poem.”
“Yes.” Abigail smiled. “Sorry. I’m tired. Debbie had read in some bio of Madame Zardo that she lives in a village called Three Pines. That’s why we went to the party. Hoping she’d be there. But she didn’t look at all interested in being approached, so I didn’t.”
